


Where Sleeps the Wind

by astrokath



Category: The Last Unicorn - Peter S. Beagle
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 12:23:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5496962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrokath/pseuds/astrokath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Where does the wind sleep?</i> the girl asks. <br/><i>A good question</i>, the old witch replies, as she empties the contents of a leather pouch onto the fire. Sparks leap up in shades of green and gold, dancing like moths in the night.  <i>Do you wish to hear the answer?</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Where Sleeps the Wind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fells](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fells/gifts).



_Where does the wind sleep?_ the girl asks.

 _A good question_ , the old witch replies, as she empties the contents of a leather pouch onto the fire. Sparks leap up in shades of green and gold, dancing like moths in the night _.  Do you wish to hear the answer?_

The girl can no more hide her eagerness than she can her beauty, or her youth, or the roiling spite that lurks ever-present behind her newly-opened eyes.  _Yes!_

It is at such moments that the old witch most often doubts the wisdom of her choice, but she, too, is made of spite and hunger, and the girl’s raw strength is intoxicating.  She beckons the girl closer with one clawed hand.

_It sleeps where it will, fortunate girl. In the dark spaces between stars, and the shallows of the trees. It sleeps between breaths, in the lungs of the stillborn child and the turning of each tide. But where it sleeps is also where it wakes. A wise witch would be well away from such a place._

_I see_ , says the girl, breathing deeply of the fumes.  _It is a good thing to know._   She smiles then, showing her teeth.

Not yet, the old witch thinks. Not yet - but she knows it will be soon, for one of them or the other. So while the girl practices her skills, of seeing and seeming, prophecy, fertility, death and desire, the old witch draws a poison deep into her blood, and readies a curse upon her tongue.

 

~

 

The blood of her mentor chills her liver to ice, but the girl survives and grows quickly into her power. Wisdom comes slower, ever outpaced by the changing winds of the world. She works small, selfish magics, spending her strength easily and to little reward.

The bones of the old witch are rotted sand before she finally understands.

Time has whittled it all away. The magic promised much, but never truly delivered, and now she has to fight at it, tooth and nail, to even touch it at all. It has faded from the world, and she is fading with it, shrivelling into a husk of skin and stone.

She is old.

She is over.

Only the memories linger, haunting and taunting her with the truths that none now believe but she.

 

~

 

She comes to hate the magic.

The few cantrips she can still claim as her own are minor, fickle things, fit only for weaving truth from falsehoods, and profit from dross.  

She hates the magic all the more, and the world too, on the day she encounters the magician.   It sparks and spills from his hapless fingers, and though she would lap it from the ground at his feet she still possesses some pride, and a good deal more spite besides.  So she weaves him a cage of lies of his own, feeds him the full measure of self-loathing and doubt that is his favoured sustenance, and sups her fill of his distress.

And if the greater magics are still out of her reach and far, far beyond her ability to command, at least she can sleep knowing they are close, that they have not entirely deserted the world, and her, after all.

She wakes each morning hungrier than ever.

 

~

 

 _Where does the wind sleep?_ the magician asks Rukh one storm-wracked night. There’d been a girl that afternoon, who’d be a woman by nightfall and a corpse in the manticore’s belly by morning,  and the magician has a soft enough heart to interfere. 

The old witch cares nothing for the girl. What does concern her, very much, is the magic that dances from the magician’s tongue: green-gold sparks torn from his lips by a wind from the stars.   _The wind sleeps where it will, fortunate fools_ , she says _._ And then, _Do not follow me,_ knowing that they will.

A wise witch would be well away from here, she thinks to herself when she sees Celaeno. But I was never wise, another part of her adds.  If I was ever a witch at all, adds a third.

 _Where does the wind sleep?_ she murmurs under her breath. _In the lee of the storm, in the harpy’s heart._

She turns to the two men, beckons them out from the shadows of the elms. _What do you see?_ she asks them.

The magician babbles incoherently for a few moments, but she doesn’t have to wait long before his sense of self-preservation finally catches up with his eyeballs. His cloddish feet bear him quickly away.

Rukh sniffs. _Big bastard of a buzzard_.

The witch sees better. She sees the great, feathered wings, edged with bloody frost. The hair of spun moonlight and the hag’s face. Claws, slack now, but still sharp and strong enough to eviscerate an ox.

Most of all, the old witch sees the magic. It hangs heavy and solid in the air, a portent of death and damnation. She hasn’t felt so empowered since that winter night all those long years ago, when she first saw Haggard’s Red Bull driving a unicorn into the dawn. She doesn’t think she’s ever felt so alive.

 _You are my death_ , she whispers to the Harpy. _One day, you will sup on my blood in vengeance…but not yet. Not yet._

The harpy stirs, and opens her eyes. There is a storm inside them, desert-pale and empty, and the still places of the world are still no longer.

 _I am Celaeno_ , the Harpy says.

 _You are mine_ , the witch corrects.

_I shall kill you._

_Yes_ , the witch agrees _. Yes, you shall. But will you kill like the beast you appear to be, or the monster you are in truth? Will you triumph over powers incomprehensible, will you strike the chains of this tired, worn earth, will you drive terror into the minds of men and feast upon the fear within their eyes?_

_I shall do all these things._

_Yes!_ says the witch again, and she does not rejoice as the cage closes around Celaeno. The magic never brings her anything but ash.

 

~

 

The harpy is true to her word.

The old witch doesn’t care. She’s through with the world now, through with men and women and magicians and unicorns, through with the whole damn lot of them. She has poison in her blood and a curse upon her tongue, but both wither away to nought under Celaeno’s acid stare.

 _I held you!_ she screams at the moment the harpy strikes, and after that there is only blood and pain. It feels like magic, she decides, as the harpy’s teeth descend.

 

~

 

_You’re mine. If you kill me, you’re mine._

Celaeno’s wings are black and clotted with the witch’s blood.  The dark spaces twixt the stars and the dying breaths of babes, the shallow whispers of trees and the last ebb of the tide: all her favoured silences echo with the witch’s voice, and the harpy knows she will never sleep again.


End file.
